Was I U to tell a doctor she’ll understand when she’s a mum?

[Calmondeck]

I usually hate when people say things like “you’ll only understand when…”, “you don’t know because you’ve never…” etc etc

But today I found myself telling a newly graduated doctor that she won’t understand until she’s a mother.

For context, a neighbour (aged 4) had a huge crash on their bike. Their helmet was dented from the impact and they had blood gushing from their forehead. There were no other adults around, just myself and my children, I attended to the child until his mother found him. At this point the child and I were covered in so much blood that both our shirts were soaked.

By coincidence the mother had a friend present, a newly graduated doctor, who told us proudly that she’s so used to seeing screaming children and overly anxious parents that she’s immune to it. She just walks into anxious rooms and “ignores the vibe”.

There was a pause, and I found myself saying she’ll understand if she ever becomes a mother.

She didn’t say anything in reply.

This has got under my skin. My child fought cancer for several years at an age where his doctors really relied on my husband and I to interpret his pain, translate toddler speak, spot symptoms etc. The team told us on day 1 of the diagnosis that no one knows the child better than the parents (they actually said mother but I chose to ignore this slightly patriarchal view) and they needed us to be vocal. My husband and I, who are pretty relaxed, originally thought “we’ll trust the professionals (ie the doctors)” but realised quickly that we really did need to point out things.

I see this neighbour almost daily, and will run into her doctor friend undoubtedly over the coming days (she is staying with them). Would it be unreasonable to tell her she needs to stop being immune to upset kids and their appropriately concerned parents?

She's a newly qualified and inexperienced doctor who happens to have the emotional empathy of a gnat. Lots and lots of.people who are clever enough to qualify as doctors are arrogant twerps. There's one in most GP practices and on most clinical teams.

The ones capable of learning how to communicate do so with experience, those who aren't continue to be poor communicators and often come across as arrogant.

It puzzles me that there's an expectation that all doctors are exceptional. They are humans like everyone else. There are good ones, bad ones, polite ones, impolite ones, fundamentally nice ones and fundamentally nasty ones.

@Calmondeck hope the child is ok.

The large chunk of doctors I know personally completely lack any social intelligence.

Some of the stuff my ex (gp) used to come out with, I couldn’t tell if he had some undiagnosed SEN or just plain nasty.

Okay but if you have a heart attack would you rather a great doctor (who may not be concerned about emotions) or one that is very empathetic but not very good.

Surely doctors have to keep an emotional distance from their jobs?

Well yes, you probably came across as a bit of a prat, but it sounds like she’s used to it. I don’t think a doctor has to have experienced every illness in order to be able to treat it and they need to have thick skins to cope with people insulting them and questioning their professionalism.

It was a poor choice of words " to ignore the vibe" whilst she needs to remain calm, professional and focused, providing reassurance to the parents, to alleviate their anxiety is significant to any treatments that she needs to administer to her patient, who would likely be anxious as a result of their parents.

Yes you were U, and rude to boot.

I’m confused - do you want a doctor who gets emotionally involved ?

You were very rude and it was an unnecessary comment.

I'd want an excellent Dr who.provided me with optimal care. I'd prefer a good communicator and tolerate a poor communicator in the short term. If the poor communicator didn't share information with me and was rude or off hand in follow up clinics, I'd regard them as a poor doctor, despite potentially saving my life. For follow up cardiology I'd probably pay to see a better cardiologist who spoke to me as their equal.

As in my earlier post re my very unwell child, re sepsis…. Would I have preferred a doctor who joined me in my tears and panic while they were putting my baby on oxygen, cannulas into their feet and preparing for a lumbar puncture… or the clinical calm of “this is what we’re doing, we have this ”…?

YANBU, she doesn’t sound much of a doctor - more an ‘I’m so coooool’ type who doesn’t have a caring bone in her body.

And taboo as it is, I agree. Being a parent, for most (not all before I get piled) seems to switch on a completely different emotional response to human pain and suffering which makes parents more empathetic and less selfish people (that isn’t saying all childfree people are selfish, but being a parent gives you a LOT of practice in putting others first that cannot otherwise be replicated unless eg you have caring responsibilities for disabled relatives or something)

The doctor sounds arrogant. But your comment of “when you become a mum” was knobbish purely because of the assumption that she wants to breed.

I adore my DC, but had them late and never felt broody. I didn’t need children to have a great life and I’m pleased to see so many younger women nowadays not automatically choosing marriage and kids.

Girl? Would you say this to a 'boy' doctor?

Coming from the mother of an aspiring doctor, what you said was so uncalled for.

sometimes doctors see so much that telling themselves - or others - that they can easily ‘ignore the vibe’ in an extremely traumatic situation is actually a protective mechanism.
i think the next time you see her you should apologise, not give her more crap like you’re intending.

Sounds like she has an awful attitude for a dr. But what you said was U

I’ve actually voted YANBU

But more because i am concerned she referred to ‘anxious mothers’

My experience and those of many of us is that actually, we are right when there is a problem but we are fobbed off as anxious mothers by GPs.

A recent example is that i took my 1 year old to the GP because she was struggling to breathe through her nose at night and this had been going on for nearly a year, regardless of what we tried to help. The GP fobbed me off, saying it was the sniffles. I went private to get a second opinion and turned out she had enlarged adenoids and tonsils causing obstructive sleep apnea and needed surgery.

Exactly this.

you were very patronising.

Let it go.

Do not get involved with this person and start telling them how to do their job.

It was the wrong time to say it and she didn’t say it well but you do have to dissociate from what is happening sometimes to deal with the problem calmly and appropriately. I’m a healthcare professional and had to deal with a very unexpected, very sick child a few weeks ago. It was chaos, several people crying, very public. Honestly, I blocked out the screaming mum, concentrated on the assessment of the child and ensuring that appropriate help was on its way then once I was sure the child was being well managed I turned my attention to what mum was telling me. It would be easy to be distracted by the very upset adult but that may have meant the child having no oxygen going to their brain and I didn’t want to risk that.

Less urgent situations are different and of course doctors miss out on vital information if they don’t listen to parents. But teasing apart parental anxiety (which is normal) from a parental sixth sense is a nuanced skill not possessed by most newly qualified doctors and by many who have been qualified for a long time.

To me the ultimate demonstration of this is the difficulty I have in using that “sixth sense” on my own children. Many health professionals report that with their own family members they are either far to cautious or nowhere near cautious enough, sometime both at the same time! There’s too much emotion and it blurs things. Objectivity and distance from emotion are incredibly important in medicine.

But yeah, pointing out how medicine makes you a bit dead inside and how an upset child covered in blood doesn’t bother her was badly timed and poorly judged at a time of high stress for everyone involved. If I was trying to analyse that I’d say she was probably over compensating for the fact that it was horrible and she did feel stressed and she perhaps felt that she shouldn’t have. But still a poor choice on her part to voice it. It all sounds really upsetting, I hope the child is ok.

You honestly don’t think the majority of adults above say 25 understand human pain and emotion and not to be totally selfish?
And all parents are totally not selfish? As others have pointed out on here before, selfish people become selfish parents. They might not be selfish when it comes to their own kids, but they just extend their selfishness to include their own kids and screw everyone else’s. Just see the stories of women with buggies saying they refuse to pack down the buggy for a wheelchair user because their child is asleep and they don’t want to disturb them.

Yes. Plus op is actually considering approaching this person, just to 'tell' her what she 'needs' to do. It's a bit unhinged.

My late GP husband used to say that he always listened to mothers as they were tuned in to their babies in a way noone else could be.

You were unreasonable yes. Totally. Doctors need to remain calm.

Just tell the doc what you said here and how being respected and heard reduced the anxiety and how important it is to trust patents gut

doc sounds cocky
and yes you can be excellent with kids and parents without having them

I don't know, I feel like both of you said equally silly things to be honest. She basically said she ignores empirical evidence, which as a doctor is quite strange. And you basically said she won't have a complete view of the world until she gives birth, which is both misogynistic and insensitive given she may not want or be able to.